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seacoastonline.com/news/02212007/nhnews-ph-nh-saint.anselm.html
Part of article…
MANCHESTER (AP) – Saint Anselm College, a Roman Catholic college with growing enrollment, has decided to make some dormitories co-ed for the first time in its 118-year history.
Starting next fall, about 10 percent of students will live in co-ed dorms, but they will be more like apartment complexes than normal dorms, with locked single-sex entrances to different areas.
Administrators at the Benedictine college say that converting three dormitories to co-ed living will help them cope with a larger student body that includes more women than men.
It also should help students improve their social skills, they said.
“It gives us some flexibility,” said the Rev. Jonathan DeFelice, St. Anselm president. “It’s something that’s been in the works for a very long time.”
Some students and alumni are welcoming the change.
Senior Kathleen Reilly said she wishes the change had occurred earlier, because strict rules now make it difficult to study with members of the opposite sex.
Tom Gunning, a junior, said co-ed dorms would encourage better behavior among male students.
“In an all-boys dorm, it kind of gets out of control,” he said.
Others are critical, including Elizabeth Pietropaoli, a high school theology teacher who graduated from the college in 2001.
“This is just one more way Saint Anselm capitulates to secular demands,” she said. “They’re trying to downplay their Catholic identity.”
She said it will set the college on a slippery slope from being a Catholic institution to “a college that teaches in the Catholic tradition.”
“I teach seniors and I don’t encourage any of them to go there,” she said. “It’s a good school, but I don’t know what it’s going to be like in 10 years.”
DeFelice rejected those arguments, saying rules restricting the hours that men and women can visit each other will be the same in all dorms.
“This is doing nothing at all to damage our identity as a Catholic institution,” he said.
He also said opposition has been minimal. The college sent out 18,000 letters to students, alumni and others. Only a half-dozen have responded and no one has asked to discuss the change with him, he said.
I found this article to be typical of what is happening to catholic colleges. This college was one of the few that hung on to tradition. Now they are trying to downplay their identity to attract secularized students.
Part of article…
MANCHESTER (AP) – Saint Anselm College, a Roman Catholic college with growing enrollment, has decided to make some dormitories co-ed for the first time in its 118-year history.
Starting next fall, about 10 percent of students will live in co-ed dorms, but they will be more like apartment complexes than normal dorms, with locked single-sex entrances to different areas.
Administrators at the Benedictine college say that converting three dormitories to co-ed living will help them cope with a larger student body that includes more women than men.
It also should help students improve their social skills, they said.
“It gives us some flexibility,” said the Rev. Jonathan DeFelice, St. Anselm president. “It’s something that’s been in the works for a very long time.”
Some students and alumni are welcoming the change.
Senior Kathleen Reilly said she wishes the change had occurred earlier, because strict rules now make it difficult to study with members of the opposite sex.
Tom Gunning, a junior, said co-ed dorms would encourage better behavior among male students.
“In an all-boys dorm, it kind of gets out of control,” he said.
Others are critical, including Elizabeth Pietropaoli, a high school theology teacher who graduated from the college in 2001.
“This is just one more way Saint Anselm capitulates to secular demands,” she said. “They’re trying to downplay their Catholic identity.”
She said it will set the college on a slippery slope from being a Catholic institution to “a college that teaches in the Catholic tradition.”
“I teach seniors and I don’t encourage any of them to go there,” she said. “It’s a good school, but I don’t know what it’s going to be like in 10 years.”
DeFelice rejected those arguments, saying rules restricting the hours that men and women can visit each other will be the same in all dorms.
“This is doing nothing at all to damage our identity as a Catholic institution,” he said.
He also said opposition has been minimal. The college sent out 18,000 letters to students, alumni and others. Only a half-dozen have responded and no one has asked to discuss the change with him, he said.
I found this article to be typical of what is happening to catholic colleges. This college was one of the few that hung on to tradition. Now they are trying to downplay their identity to attract secularized students.